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Writing

NIK JARVIE-WALDROM
Empathy
PechaKucha Presentation
I've been reflecting on my role in the use and abuse of evidence — in the past as a radio producer and more recently as a writer in a design research company. Storytelling is held aloft as something businesses need to do more of — and be better at — but often the narratives do not belong to businesses. We are re-tellers. The work of a writer presenting design research isolates evidence from its source. There are limits to what we can do to make sure evidence is considered alongside the intention it was gathered with. I started working on this because I wanted to share my indignation at evidence I gathered being misrepresented. My editors have turned stories of triumph into stories of disaster to get more clicks. But I've noticed the similarity between my questioning of editors, and the anthropologists I work with questioning me.
Evidence exists in relation to questions. Defining the things we're curious about helps us focus, and decide which evidence to seek out. Ethnographers...

Reply by Melissa Cefkin Manager, Discovery Practices, Accelerated Discovery Lab, IBM Research A great and perennial question that does not lend itself to one answer. The EPIC community is rich and varied in terms of the contexts of their work. In turn, what ‘works’ or is even feasible in these varied contexts varies. This applies…